Up to $50,000 in prize money supplied by private donors is available to award in the 2011 University of Massachusetts Amherst Innovation Challenge. Student innovators and entrepreneurs will make investor presentations from 3:30 to approximately 5:30 p.m. that day. Judges must decide which team has the best entrepreneurial plan for taking a new idea to market. The winning team or teams will be announced at about 6:45 p.m.

While the judges are deliberating from 6:15 to 6:40 p.m., CleanTech Open Northeast, previously known as the Ignite Clean Energy Competition, part of the largest global clean tech business competition, will conduct an information session.

The final four competing teams in the Innovation Challenge are:

• 3D Therapeutics, which is developing a proprietary in vitro model of biological tissues that it will use to help streamline the process of drug development.

• Posytive LLC is an electronic design automation (EDA) company that provides software for designing and manufacturing electronic devices.

Since 2005, the UMass Amherst Innovation Challenge has provided more than $280,000 in awards to 32 different student-led teams. It is designed to help current students and young alumni who have innovative business ideas to develop business plans and move products closer to market. The UMass Innovation Challenge is supported by Eugene M. and Ronnie Isenberg and the following sponsors: Wolf Greenfield; Saint-Gobain; Joseph Bohan; Paul Carney ’82; CISCO; Forge Partners; Raytheon; VISTAGY; Wayne Boulais ’85, ’88; Stephen Dunne ’89; Michael Tunstall ’82, and Karen Lauter Utgoff Consulting.